Taiwan Documentary Screening with NATSA in NorCal

May 17, 2017 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm

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Film Director: Alder Yang, Founder of Awakening Lab in Taiwan Moderator: Ruo-Fan Liu, University of Wisconsin-Madison Moderator: Yu-Hui Chang, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

People always believe that pursuing academic achievement will ensure them to get higher degrees and stable jobs. In Taiwan, this conventional belief is tied with an imperial examination system which intensifies the pressure for students to learn. However, will students be able to remember their passion of learning and keep exploring their potential while complying with this belief? What is the reason of learning under this testing system? Alder Yang, who was the alternative school’s student, questioned this belief and spent six years trying to find the answer.

“If There’s A Reason To Study” was shot at an alternative school in Taiwan called Humanity Junior High School. Alder Yang documents his friends from junior high to college. Taking a bold step to participate in the story, Yang focuses on the struggling test-prep period when his friends were preparing for the Basic Competence Tests (BCT) to apply for normal high schools in the spring of 2009. Three cases were followed by Yang after they went to college. By tracing their journey from junior high school to college, the film tells a story about how the high-stake testing system might be the reason that his friends lose the motivation in learning and the courage to discover their own calling.

In addition to these three cases, there are thousands of students who choose alternative education encounter the same situation. Currently in Taiwan, the alternative education blossoms after 2000, followed by the “Three types of Experimental Education Act (e.g., alternative school, homeschooling, experimental education)” which was passed in 2014. Although the 12-year compulsory education will be launched in 2018, the experimental movements still face challenges when trying to transform the mainstream values and test-driven learning approaches in the current educational tracking system in Taiwan. By watching this film, we question what roles and actions, in research and practice, can we take to develop diverse and positive learning? In what way can we cultivate learners’ self-awareness to take back their ownership and motivations in their individual learning trajectories?

The theme of NATSA 23rd annual conference, RE: Taiwan as Practice, Method, and Theory, mirrors Taiwan’s education system and alternative education practices in this participatory and longitudinal documentary. We sincerely invite you to join this documentary screening event and participate in the post-screening discussion with us. Alder Yang, the film director, will share his insights after the screening. Ruo-Fan Liu, a Ph.D. student studying in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Yu-Hui Chang, a Ph.D. student studying Learning Technologies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities will lead the post-screening discussion.

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Founded in 2006, TaiwaneseAmerican.org is a web portal site highlighting many of the interesting people, events and organizations that make up Taiwanese America. It is both a volunteer-driven website and a non-profit organization that intends to connect and promote those who identify with the Taiwanese identity, heritage, or culture. By establishing our niche within the broader Asian Pacific American and mainstream communities, we hope to collectively contribute to the wonderful and diverse mosaic that America represents.